Europe`s Big 3 Have A Lot Of Fences To Mend

BERLIN — Geography and economic power make it inevitable that the long-term security and stability of Europe will rest on German security and stability. That in turn will depend on Germany`s relations with the three major powers closest to it: the Soviet Union (or whatever takes the place of the USSR), France, and the U.K. The United States and Canada are involved as well, and will be so long as the NATO structure lasts-if it lasts; theirs, however, is an indirect connection. The trouble is between Germany and France and Britain. One places a question mark over NATO`s future because solid as NATO appears today, change is very rapid now and the Persian Gulf crisis is a drastic drain of American attention from NATO. War there would make that worse. In Europe, the goal of security reappraisal can be stated succinctly:

It is to demilitarize security.

Certainly this is what Germans think and expect. They made that evident at a recent Aspen Institute Berlin conference on German security. It is one reason they have so resolutely ignored the gulf. War there does not fit their belief that non-military measures of security, economic and political measures, should be substituted for the forms of military security dominating the last 44 years.

These are not unreasonable expectations. Force reductions in Europe are already virtually certain to go below the levels mandated in the conventional force reduction agreement signed recently at the Paris Summit.

Germany will reduce its military personnel to a 370,000 total within four years, a cut of more than a third from the East and West German force that existed before German unification. Soviet forces will be out of East Germany and Eastern Europe as fast as conditions in the USSR (housing, jobs) permit, and in any case by the end of 1994. Germany is paying the Soviet Union generously to speed those forces home.

The French are pulling their troops out of Germany, and Britain and the U.S. are reducing theirs. It is a reasonable bet that Western forces will be completely out of Germany by the time the Russians are. A year ago everyone would have thought a continued allied force in Germany essential, one that included Americans and Canadians. Six months ago one would have held it probable that such a force would be there for the foreseeable future. Now it seems merely a possibility; equally possible is that the allies will go, and go fairly soon.

This makes the German-French-British relations more important than ever, but current German-French relations are bad, and Britain`s relations with both France and Germany are worse, or have been until now. And of course Germany`s other major neighbor, the Soviet Union, is in so chaotic a condition that no one can know what will happen there.

Bad relations among the three Western powers are mainly the product of the strain German unification has placed on the alliance structure of the last four decades, complicated by the hostility of the Thatcher government in Britain towards both European political integration and a united Germany.

In France, German unification and Britain`s enmity have produced a sense of isolation, reinforcing the old French inclination towards destructive behavior and self-fulfilling pessimism.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl made his contributions to worsened relations with his neighbors by evasiveness last year on the Polish border question, and subsequently by direct negotiations with Mikhail Gorbachev for a Russo-German settlement last July that included a mutual non-aggression pledge.

That agreement also provided major economic aid for Russia, and annoyed the U.S. as well as Britain and France. They had believed that they, as World War II`s victors, were the ones negotiating a German settlement with Moscow.

The French were particularly angry and drew from the event deeply gloomy conclusions about the future of Western cooperation. They announced withdrawal of the three French armored divisions that have been stationed in Germany. Unofficially they said that if Germany wished to regulate its security problems unilaterally with Moscow, it could have no further need for French troops or for NATO`s protection.

The Germans in turn were amazed by the French reaction, believing that Germany at this late date need not apologize to its allies for taking Germany`s affairs in hand. The Germans` assumption-and it is by no means unspoken-is that Germany has served its sentence. Forty-four years of limited sovereignty are enough. It is no longer incumbent upon Germans to defer to all that their allies say and think.

An outsider can find it difficult to take all this as seriously as some of the participants are taking it, particularly in France, where domestic political quarrel and maneuver are peculiarly sordid at the moment and pessimism is a la mode. The need of the three countries for one another remains very great and increases with every new step in the political disintegration and economic collapse of the U.S.S.R.